Lod)i  Exhibition 
Paintings 

o 

by 

J.  Francis  Murphy 

1833 — ^92^ 


The  MACBETH  GALLERY 

4^0  Fifth  Avenue  New  York  City 

I  9  2  I 


Copyrighted,  iqxi 
WILLIAM  MACBETH,  Inc. 


FRANCIS  MUKPHY 


AcknowledQtnent  to 


Burton  Mansfield,  Esq. 
James  G.  Shepherd,  Esq. 
Alex  M.  Hudnut,  Esq. 
Mrs.  Charles  Stanford 
J.  Otis  Wardwell,  Esq. 
Mrs.  R.  C.  Vose 
Messrs.  R.  C.  and  N.  M.  Vose 
L.  A.  Lehmaier,  Esq. 
Mr.  J.  G.  Butler,  Jr. 
George  S.  Palmer,  Esq. 
Messrs.  M.  Knoedler  &  Co. 
Dr.  Robert  S.  J.  Mitcheson 
Mrs.  William  Macbeth 
C.  Lansing  Baldwin,  Esq. 
Charles  L.  Buchanan,  Esq. 


whose  generous  cooperation  in 
lending  their  pictures  has  made 
this  exhibition  possible. 


Titles  of  the  Pdint  ings 


I 

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Autumn 

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bummer  Heat 

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Lingers 

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Autumn  . 

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Near  a  Clearing 

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Showers  . 

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Uetober  Afternoon 

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November  urax  s 

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June 

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Late  Afterncx)n  . 

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November 

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Hillside  Farm 

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The  Brook 

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On  the  Meadow 

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Edge  of  a  Clearing 

i()Xl4 

APPROACH  TO  THE  OLD  FARM.   No.  23 


The  Art  of  J.  Francis 


Murphy 


HE  plain  of  the  present  cxhiHit u)n  was  conccixcJ 


some  \ears  baek  an^l  clelmiteU  JeeiJeJ  upon  in 


the  fall  o\  u)20.  The  original  i^iea  was  soniethmt^ 
in  the  nature  of  a  capriee  on  the  part  of  a  few  persons 
who  felt  themseKes  impelleLl  to  give  some  eoncieic 
form  of  expression  to  their  proloimJ  interest  in  the 
art  of  j.  l^^raneis  Murphy.  I  heir  ohjecl  w  as  to  g.ithei" 
together,  in  so  far  as  the\'  w  ere  able,  a  group  of  j^ietures 
that  should  be  to  the  highest  elegree  representative  of 
the  best  of  \  lurphy  s  art.  Emphasis  has  been  iai^i  up(  ni 
the  pictures  of  \lurph\  *s  later  period,  as  it  is  more  than 
probable  that  his  claim  to  originalit\'  rests  uj^on  the 
work  he  accomplished  during  the  last  twenty  years  of 
his  life.  The  original  plan  of  attempting  to  secure  a 
discriminatixe  rather  than  a  comprehensixe  collection 
of  pictures  has  been  maintained,  despite  the  fact  that 
Murph\  "s  death,  on  January  30,  lends  to  the  present 
exhibition  a  lamentable  and  wholK  unanticipated 
significance. 

Murphy  attained  the  highest  degree  of  distinction 
that  can  come  to  the  artist:  he  was  depreciated  by 
contemi^Kirary  professional  opinion.  The  conclusixe 
significance  of  this  fact  will  be  at  f)nce  apparent  to  any 
one  at  all  familiar  with  the  history  of  art.  (furiously 
enough,  he  succeeded  in  pleasing  neither  the  radicals 
nor  the  conservatives.  He  was  graciously  disparaged 
by  complacent  mediocrities;  bitterly  and  sometimes 
scurrilously  assailed  by  intemperate  persons  of  cheap 


/.  Francis  Murphy 


and  facile  cultivations.  He  was  "negligible".  He 
couldn't  "draw".  He  was  "standardized".  There 
lingered  about  his  work  the  "faintest  hint  of  a  studio 
gesture".  This  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  was  said  of 
one  of  the  loveliest,  most  inspired  and  absolutely  the 
most  original  painter  of  landscape  this  country  has 
produced. 

It  is  obvious  that  Murphy "s  case  runs  parallel  with 
the  records  of  all  artists  that  have  brought  into  art  a 
new  and  peculiarly  individual  way  of  seeing  and  feeling. 
The  charges  that  have  been  brought  against  Murphy — 
some  of  them  utterly  preposterous — are  the  sort  of 
thing  that  has  been  said  from  time  immemorial  against 
any  artist  that  has  worked  within  a  restricted  range  of 
expression,  or  has  expressed  himself  through  a  sharply 
defined  idiom.  Identical  instances  may  be  cited  in  the 
cases  of  Grieg,  Chopin,  Debussy,  Swinburne,  Yeats. 
Co  rot,  Whistler,  and  a  dozen  others.  One  cannot  help 
suspecting  that  professional  criticism  is  utterly  in- 
capable of  correctly  estimating  original  work.  In  fact, 
one  is  led  to  the  belief  that  the  critic  and  the  artist  are 
the  last  persons  to  appreciate  the  essential  significance 
of  the  work  of  art.  Possibly  the  explanation  of  this 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  professional  critic  and  the 
artist  are  the  victims  of  their  prepossessions:  they  are 
limited,  quite  unconsciously  no  doubt,  to  an  apprecia- 
tion of  those  works  of  art  that  represent  for  them  a 
tangible  embodiment  of  the  peculiar  theories  and  cri- 
terions  they  have  formulated.  They  are  still  obsessed 
by  the  impossible  ideal  of  a  fixed  standard  of  artistic 
excellence  (as  though  art  could  be  prescribed),  whereas 


The  Macbeth  Gallery 


II  II    IMK)!..   N...  :i 


e\er\'  sane  person  knows  thnt  noli  cnn  no  more  set 
arbitrary  definitions  upon  art  than  \  ou  can  explain  the 
mysterx'  of  personal  magnetism. 

It  is  perfectK'  apparent  \\h\  \!urph\'  should  have 
proved  a  hard  nut  for  stereotyped  and  sophisticated 
criticism  to  crack.  One  could,  of  course.  hardK'  expect 
our  "modernists  to  consider  him,  for  these  superlative 
exquisites,  who  have  transcended  c)ur  human  frailties 
and  sentimentalities,  are  implacahK  oppc^sed  to  any 
art  that  is  not  exclusi\ely  occult  complex  and  fan- 
tastic. These  persons  are  consistent,  however  one 
believes  that  their  premises  are  false,  shallow  and 
infirm  Consider,  on  the  other  hand,  w  hat  the  academic 
critics  had  to  run  up  against  when  the\  found  them- 
selves confronted  by  the  uncongenial  task  f)f  con- 


/.  Francis  Murphy 


templating  a  Murphy.  Here  was  a  man  so  peculiarly, 
strangely  different  from  the  sort  of  thing  they  were 
accustomed  to  that  they  were  faced  by  the  necessity 
of  formulating  a  whole  new  set  of  criterions  through  which 
to  estimate  him.  It  was  perfectly  apparent  to  them 
that  a  Tryon,  a  Hassam,  or  an  Alden  Weir  was  a  de- 
lightful and  accomplished  artist:  the  essential  and 
obvious  preoccupation  of  these  painters  was  to  achieve 
a  decorative  beauty.  Murphy,  to  the  contrary,  was 
engaged  in  placing  a  simple  statement  of  plain  fact 
before  us.  Other  painters  subjected  nature  to  exquisite 
re-adjustments  and  transpositions;  to  a  sort  of  refining 
process,  as  it  were,  wherein  nature  is  shown  us  as  a 
decorously  charming  thing  quite  divested  of  its  in- 
herent identity.  Murphy  took  a  bald,  stark,  actual 
nature  and  put  it  on  canvas,  retaining  and  revealing, 
with  consummate  and  inspired  felicity,  its  native  char- 
acteristics. His  art  rose  out  of  the  soil  with  something 
about  it  of  that  peculiar  quality  of  dry,  strange  pathos 
one  finds  in  a  song  of  Stephen  Foster's  or  a  poem  of 
Robert  Burns'.  It  was  a  veritable  dialect  of  painting. 
It  held  the  very  bite  and  tang  of  nature.  It  was 
quite  unprecedentedly  real,  and,  as  in  the  case  of  In- 
ness,  though  less  comprehensively,  it  penetrated  to  the 
core  of  our  recollections. 

The  present  writer  has  never  had  a  doubt  as  to  what 
the  ultimate  verdict  on  Murphy  will  be.  There  may 
always  be  a  difference  of  opinion  as  to  his  point  of 
view — this  is  a  matter  of  personal  taste.  There  can 
be  absolutely  no  question  as  to  his  workmanship.  It  is 
simply  incomparable.    It  is  not  too  much  to  contend 


The  Macbeth  Gallery 


OCTOBER  AFTERNOON.   No.  n 


that.  technicalK'.  Murphx  was  the  greatest  painter  of 
landscape  this  or  any  other  country  has  produced.  I  lad 
he  come  to  us  from  abroad,  heralded  b\  press-agent 
and  propaganda,  he  would  ha\e  been  accepted  at 
something  like  his  true  worth.  The  funLlamcntal 
humanness  of  his  appeal  and  his  dej^iorable  mistake 
of  achie\ing  a  commercial  notoriety,  deceived  his 
critics.  They  did  not  see  that  back  of  the  apparent 
and  \  ery  deceptix  e  simplicity  of  Murphy  there  was  an 
impeccable  and  unique  craftsmanship  that  transcended 
a  mere  obvious  artifice.  No  (;ne  has  ever  interpreted 
with  so  affectionate  and  adroit  a  divination  the  in- 
articulate pathos  of  naked  and  neglected  areas,  of 
desolate  lands,  of  the  wet  earth,  soggy  and  disconsolate 
from  {"persistent  rains.  Compared  to  the  sheer,  stark 
reality  of  these  frugal  and  aboriginal  representations,  a 


/.  Francis  Murphy 


Corot  would  seem  cursi\'e  and  unreal,  a  Monet  essen- 
tially artificial,  an  Alden  Weir  experimental  and  un- 
convincing, a  Tryon  plausibly  and  fluently  insincere. 
But  the  essential  and  quite  extraordinary  significance 
of  Murphy's  art  is  the  fact  that  this  homely,  primitive 
point  of  view  is  fused  miraculously  with  a  degree  of 
sheer  beauty  for  which,  with  the  exception  of  Corot, 
there  is  no  equal  in  all  landscape  painting.  It  is  per- 
fectly obvious  that  other  painters  have  achieved  in- 
finitely higher  reaches  of  imagination ;  no  painter  repre- 
sents so  peculiar  an  equilibrium  maintained  between  an 
elementary  and  literal  point  of  view  and  a  decorative 
and  classical  kind  of  loveliness.  It  was  Murphy's 
unique  accomplishment  to  achieve  an  absolute  realism 
without  a  loss  of  that  mystic,  indefinable  quality  which 
transfigures  realism.  A  tree  trunk  of  Murphy's  has 
bulk,  weight,  circumference ;  his  foreground  is  solid  earth. 
His  paint  is  not  an  approximation  of  nature:  it  is 
nature,  and  yet  it  remains  beautiful  as  paint.  Whether 
in  handling  the  black  of  a  tangle  of  branches  thrown 
against  the  sky,  the  peculiarly  brownish  yellows  of  a 
clump  of  bushes,  the  rank,  soaking  browns  of  a  dead 
earth,  Murphy  achieves  a  degree  of  veracity  positively 
clairvoyant  in  its  inspired  divination.  Note,  again,  the 
range  of  his  expression.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
glorious  Indian  Summer,  the  strange,  gray,  dry  au- 
sterity of  the  November  Morning,  the  gracefulness  of 
the  little  green  Morning.  For  imaginative  conception, 
one  asks  where  in  all  American  landscape  painting  is 
there  a  more  original  picture  than  the  unique  Showers, 
a  picture  with  a  kind  of  Oriental  grotesqueness  about 
it  almost  repulsi\e  at  first  glance.    Note  the  large 


The  Macbeth  Gallery 


green  picture  lent  by  the  Butler  Art  Institute.  If 
this  picture  had  been  painted  b\  Cezanne,  we  should 
ha\"e  heard  no  end  of  talk  of  "organization  '  (w  hatever, 
precisely,  this  may  mean).  Painted  b\  j.  I  rancis 
Murphy — ! 

Murphy  is  a  peg  on  which  one  could  hang  an  in- 
terminable discussion  of  artistic  principles.  This,  of 
course,  is  not  the  place  for  such  a  discussion.  Murphy's 
age  was  an  age  of  unprecedented  upheaval  in  all 
branches  of  human  thought  and  endeavor.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  the  standards  we  are  accustomed  to  apply 
to  the  work  of  art  are  outmoded  and  insufficient.  We 
can  argue  about  this,  but  we  can  arrive  at  no  satisfac- 
tory conclusion,  one  way  or  the  other.  All  we  know 
is  that,  judged  by  the  standards  that  have  come  dow  n 


J,  Francis  Murphy 


to  us  from  the  past.  Murphy  was  a  superlatively  beau- 
tiful painter.  In  that  remarkable  development  of  his 
art  that  dates  from  about  iqoi  to  a  few  days  before  his 
death,  he  supplies  us  with  a  unique  something  at  once 
so  strangely  lovely  and  deceptively  simple  that  it  is 
safe  to  say  we  have  not  yet  scratched  the  surface  of  its 
significance.  The  present  writer  is  free  to  confess  that, 
for  him,  Murphy's  art  is  unique.  No  one  of  our  time, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Emil  Carlsen  in  his  later 
still  life  work,  exhibits  quite  so  magical  a  manipulation 
of  material.  To  those  susceptible  to  the  peculiar, 
ineffable  penetrativeness  of  its  appeal,  its  charm  eludes 
definition.  Persons  of  shallow  and  sophisticated  sensi- 
bilities will  continue  to  ignore  and  disparage  its  re- 
ticent exquisiteness.  We  need  not  take  them  seriously. 
The  authentic  capacity  for  artistic  appreciation  reveals 
itself  in  the  ability  to  estimate,  each  for  its  particular 
degree  of  intrinsic  significance,  things  widely,  even 
totally,  dissimilar. 

Limitations  are  not  deficiencies,  and  Murphy's 
alleged  limitations  are  no  more  clearly  marked  than  are 
the  limitations  of  Corot,  Daubigny,  Mauve,  Tryon 
(note  the  latter's  inevitable  middle -distance  line  of 
trees),  Dewing  and  a  dozen  others.  The  absurd  habit 
still  persists  of  emphasizing  what  an  artist  is  not:  it 
would  appear  the  more  equitable  attitude  to  accept, 
whole-heartedly,  whatever  degree  of  peculiar  charm 
each  individual  artist  has  to  give  us.  Perhaps  one 
wishes,  sometimes,  that  Murphy's  inclination  towards 
the  evolving  of  new  and  fanciful  patterns  had  been  more 
assiduously  cultivated;  that  he  had  been  a  trifle  more 


 \,  

The  Macbeth  Gallery 


SHOWERS.   No.  25 


consciously  desirous  of  achieving  a  novelty  of  design. 
But  when  all  is  said  and  done,  one  knows  that  his 
reputation  will  grow  incalculably  with  the  years,  for  his 
work  stands  four-square  upon  the  impregnable  founda- 
tion of  a  human  expression,  nobly  plain,  transfigured 
by  that  kind  of  clairvoyant,  magic  touch  which  we 
recognize  as  of  direct  kinship  with  the  royal  line  of  the 
world's  wonder-workers  of  lovely  things.  He  has  been 
elected,  as  every  authentic  artist  is,  by  the  People;  the 
People,  who  have  stubbornly  refused  to  be  distracted 
or  demoralized  by  the  spurious  and  sophistical  ex- 
tremities of  ''modernism".  One  does  not  doubt  that 
his  position  is  secure  so  long  as  human  nature  retains 
its  capacity  for  the  appreciation  of  fundamental  truth 
and  genuine  beauty. 


